The World's Most Toxic Value System

The more I travel, study history and read the papers, the more convinced I become of the superiority of rationalism. With that attitude, I should spend all my time
traveling to northern Europe and Japan. However, fate has also seen fit to send me to many places where people think with their viscera and gonads instead of their brains. The more I see it in action, the more convinced I become that societies that place personal "honor" before everything else are truly cursed. This value system has ramifications that pervade the societies infested with it. It is, in my view, the most toxic value system on the planet. The term toxic is carefully chosen and meant to be taken with the utmost literalness because societies pervaded by this value system are deeply poisoned spiritually.

Almost everybody will react to an attack on their honor, but in many societies people are expected to restrain their impulse to get revenge: to forgive or simply
ignore insults, and most members of those societies succeed to a greater or lesser extent. But in societies dominated by the "honor" ethic, it's permissible, often demanded, to seek revenge. In many places, this cycle of revenge creates blood feuds that last for generations, or results in periodic flareups of mass violence or ethnic cleansing.

If there's a single attribute that defines the "honor" mentality,
it's the notion that private killing over personal grievances is acceptable. But
in addition to the most obvious manifestations of blood feud and vendetta, the "honor" mentality includes a constellation of other attributes.
Most conspicuous is male domination, which often includes systematic degradation
of women and extreme paranoia regarding female sexuality and possible
infidelity.

Honor and "Honor"

We use the word "honor" in two ways. One meaning denotes a set of
largely internal attributes: trustworthiness, loyalty, courage and truthfulness.
The other denotes an externality, as in the expressions "graduation with
honors" or "honorary degree." The dual usage arises from the
notion that honor given externally by others should arise from behavior that
exemplifies the internal kind of honor. Thus, Winston Churchill was given
honorary U. S. citizenship (honor in the external sense) because his leadership
during World War II exemplified honor in the internal sense. It is perfectly
possible, and all too common, to be vilified externally for pursing internal
honor. It is also possible to achieve honor in the external sense without having
the internal variety, in some cases through deliberate deception. The student
who graduates "with honors" by cheating on exams is the perfect
example.

When describing other societies, our failure to distinguish between the two
types of honor leads to gross misunderstandings. So far I have always put "honor" in
quotes except when referring explicitly to internalized honor. I am convinced that "honor" is a gross mistranslation of words from other languages. While these concepts in other languages may overlap some of the elements of what we term honor, the "honor" mentality just as often impels people in other societies to do things that are grossly dishonorable by our standards. The "honor" mentality can blow up a school bus, then demand satisfaction when someone calls it cowardice to blow up a school bus. It can force women to live lives totally dominated by male authority, then become indignant when that domination is portrayed in a documentary.

When a concept has a label that is diametrically opposed to the normal sense of the term, it's the wrong label. This has nothing to do with value
judgment (although my value judgment is clearly stated), it is simply a matter of using words accurately.
If you translate a foreign word as "red," and notice that people
always use it when describing grass, it's obvious that your translation is
faulty. If you translate a foreign word as "honor" and find it often
used to describe dishonorable acts, it's equally obvious that your translation
is faulty. And I'm not at all interested in the argument that it's their
concept of honor. Their concept has a label in their language, but
if it doesn't correspond to our concept of honor as we use the word in
English, then it's a faulty
translation. If all else fails, use the foreign word, but don't mistranslate.

The Blindingly Obvious

It's considered bad form in many circles to criticize another culture's
values. In addition, the social science literature contains a number of
rationalizations for the "honor" mentality. One is that every value
system makes sense to the people that hold it. Another is that every value
system exists for a reason. Well, of course. The problem is that you can make
these assertions about any value system whatsoever. Rape and genocide and
embezzlement also exist for a reason, and make sense to people who think a
certain way. That doesn't tell us whether the values are morally acceptable or
even whether they are beneficial to those who adhere to them.

So I regard it as trivially obvious that the "honor" mentality
exists for a reason and makes perfect sense to the people that adhere to it. I
don't doubt it for a moment. I merely claim that these values debilitate the
societies that hold them. Smoking makes perfect sense to a nicotine addict, but
it can nevertheless kill him. Not exercising makes sense to a couch potato but
it will only make his problems worse.

Thar

Although this "honor" mentality tends to be a feature of what anthropologists sometimes call "shame" cultures, "shame" is not really an accurate term either. There really is no specific term in English to describe this value system.
The social science literature commonly describes this mentality as
"feuding," but though feuding is common in such societies, the term
"feud" tends to obscure other aspects of the value system. The
term "Mediterranean" is also widely used in the social science
literature, and although it's accurate in that almost the entire periphery of
the Mediterranean shares this value system to some extent, we find it far beyond
the Mediterranean. The term "traditional" is sometimes used to
describe cultures imbued with the values I'm discussing, but the word is
unsuitable as a general label for too many obvious reasons.

Words from other languages like "vendetta" and "machismo" aren't really satisfactory because they have been taken into English and at best cover only a part of the attributes of this value system. What we need is a foreign term
unfamiliar in English. There's a Spanish word, pundonor, a contraction of punta de honor or "point of honor", but it's not really satisfactory for two reasons. First, its components are too similar to English to avoid confusion and second, it's really not fair to saddle Spanish culture with the term. While we can find this attitude in Spanish cultures, it's much more virulent, destructive and unmoderated by humor and common sense in other parts of the world. Until I find a more accurate term, I will use the Arabic word
thar, "blood vengeance," for this value system. The term
embodies many of the attributes of the "honor" or "feud"
mentality, has no semantic baggage attached to it for English speakers, and
comes from one of the largest languages and cultures where these values are
widespread.

We find this mentality developed to differing degrees in different places.
Hispanics, Turks and Greeks can be roused to seek revenge if insulted, but my
experience with these cultures is that the "honor" mentality is deeply
moderated by pragmatism, a sense of humor, and a general zest for living
(another reason I consider the label "Mediterranean" inappropriate).
On the other hand, I recall a bank clerk in Naples who refused to cash
travelers' checks even though he had cashed them the previous day. His
attitude seemed to be "You're the SOB who makes it necessary for me to come
to work and I'm not going to do a thing for you." 24 hours afterward, I
cashed a large amount of checks in Greece, totally wiping out the cash supply of
a small bank office. Not the slightest problem. The attitude here seemed to be
"It's too much trouble to be a pain. Let's cooperate and enjoy life."
Where I've personally seen the "honor" mentality at its most grim,
deadly, and unredeemed by humanizing characteristics is in the Balkans and the
Middle East.

The thar mentality can be said to include these features. They vary in
degree from person to person and place to place but if we find all or most of
them in a society we can justly apply the label thar.

Extreme importance of personal status and sensitivity to insult

Acceptance of personal revenge including retaliatory killing

Obsessive male dominance

Paranoia over female sexual infidelity

Primacy of family rights over individual rights

Nothing better illustrates the thar mentality better than the fury
directed by Islamic militants against Danish and Norwegian cartoons of Mohammed.
Sacrilegious art in other cultures can offend and get people angry but the
lunatic response of radical Islamists is in a class by itself. It's the
shrieking, out of control petulance of a three-year old throwing a tantrum.
People infected with this attitude will be utterly incapable of recognizing
wrongdoing by their own society, utterly incapable of taking criticism or
recognizing the need for correction. This is remarkably close to the image of
Hell painted by C. S. Lewis in his books Perelandra and The Screwtape
Letters: a paralyzing self-absorption that
imprisons the individual in hate and impotent rage while simultaneously blinding
him to any possibility of escape.

Bushido is not Thar

One of the most profound consequences of mistranslating foreign terms as "honor" is a tendency by many people to regard Japanese society as similar to the
thar cultures of the Balkans and the Middle East. Japan is not a "shame" culture - Japan and the West are the two great "guilt" cultures of the
world (and this, I'm convinced, is directly responsible for their leadership
in technology, but that's a long story I'll touch on below.) The Japanese code of Bushido indeed placed great emphasis on personal honor
but also on obedience no matter what. When the Japanese were ordered by the Emperor to surrender and submit in 1945, they did.
When the Japanese were told by the Emperor to submit to the worst, they quite
literally expected to be punished and enslaved. We for our part expected sullen
acquiescence at best and terrorism at worst. Both sides, to their immense
relief, saw the best side of the other. Just imagine the PLO ever accepting an order to recognize the right of Israel to exist. Just imagine the Irish Republican Army obeying an order from the Vatican to disarm. Just imagine the Serbs following an order to give up Kosovo. Just imagine any of these groups accepting the legitimacy of anyone who even tried to issue such a command.

In sharp contrast to thar, Bushido was an internalized code of
honor. One could be shamed in Bushido even if nobody else knew.

In her book The Rape of Nanking, Iris Chang recounts the story of a
Japanese doctor who had willingly committed atrocities in China during World War
II. He now has a shrine of remorse in his waiting room. Many Japanese are in
denial about Japanese war crimes but others want to know the truth; it's a
terrible struggle for many given their cultural conditioning, but many are
making the effort. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for anyone in
Hamas, Serbia, Rwanda, or Liberia to build a shrine of remorse.

The Toxicity of Thar

There is, in my view, a direct correlation between the poverty of many societies and their tendency toward the
thar mentality. Italy is a striking example. There is a remarkable north-south gradient of attitude and wealth in Italy; the far north is wealthy, highly industrialized, participated vigorously in the Renaissance, and is fully in the European mainstream. Although machismo is everywhere in Italy, in the north it rarely leads to anything more than loud exchanges in traffic. As you travel south in Italy, and particularly in the mezzogiorno, the region from Naples south, the poverty increases and so does the
thar mentality. Blood feuds over petty slights are commonplace in Sicily and Calabria (the "toe" of Italy). Many historians see this mentality as springing from deep poverty and long oppression, but it's not hard to find poor societies or societies with long histories of oppression where the
thar mentality is much less virulent. Instead, I argue that the thar
mentality causes poverty, and causes or certainly reinforces the oppression in the society.

The thar mentality hinders technological progress in a host of ways. Most obviously, it hinders people from moving into new occupations. You can't become an engineer if the family demands that you go into shoemaking like all your ancestors did. It also blocks progress by causing people to shun necessary but low-status tasks or occupations. Some examples:

When Western firms first started doing business in Saudi Arabia, they encountered a cultural roadblock. Men would eagerly learn how to do technical tasks, but at first refused to clean things - parts, tools, work areas - because cleaning things was "womens' work."

After my civil affairs unit had been in Kuwait a month in 1991, we began to sense that something was wrong: the recovery was far too slow. Kuwait was not that badly damaged in the Gulf War, apart from the burning oil wells. It was certainly not as badly damaged as an American city would have been by an earthquake or hurricane. The prevailing attitude everywhere was "where can we hire people to clean up? This attitude, that local people are managers and the actual hands-on work is done by hired help, is pervasive in the Persian Gulf and is very similar to the attitude of ancient Rome. In ancient Rome the attitude was that if citizens needed technical help, they could always
buy an educated slave.

In many societies, the low-status jobs are first taken by foreigners who either don't share their neighbors' disdain for the jobs, or who are more interested in profit than status. However, when the low-status jobs turn out to be critical, often the locals find that they have been bypassed on the ladder to success. Worse yet, the rungs above them are occupied. In many African nations, shopkeeping and clerical jobs were left to Asian immigrants because they were considered too lowly for the warrior and herding classes. As time went by and it became obvious that trade and government were the routes to prosperity,
that there really weren't all that many jobs for traditional warriors and that
killing lions with a spear was not a skill in high demand, the immigrants who took the former low-status jobs found themselves targets of resentment. In Idi Amin's Uganda in the late 1960's, Asian shopkeepers were simply expelled, but at least they were spared the agony of living in the society that Amin proceeded to
create.

Immigrant families from thar-dominated societies to the United States
often strongly resisted public education because it was seen as a threat to
the authority of the family.

It's very common to read accounts of entrepreneurs in Third World countries
who could easily achieve even greater success but deliberately refrain because
if they did, they would be inundated by extended family members. Could there
be a more effective mechanism for keeping a society poor?

For sheer, bottom-of-the-barrel depravity, it's hard to top this. A recent
newspaper account of the plight of AIDS orphans in Africa described how they
would often be left utterly destitute because their parents' relatives would
swoop in and take all their property. No doubt these are the same relatives who
would expect the orphans to support them if they became successful.

The most pervasive block to technical progress in thar-dominated societies is more subtle. It is summed up in a Middle Eastern proverb: "it is not enough for me to succeed - others must also fail."
This attitude is related to a concept called "absolute scarcity" in
the social science literature - the notion that all human needs are in finite
supply and there is not enough to go around. Obviously such an attitude will
lead to resentment of success by others. A thar-dominated society will
never achieve equality, regardless how prosperous it becomes, because prosperity
for the masses is a direct affront to the status of the elite.

Degradation of Women

Thar-dominated societies aren't merely male-dominated, but subject
women to extreme degrees of degradation. Part and parcel of the thar
mentality is extreme paranoia (take that term in the literal, clinical sense of
mental illness) regarding female sexuality and possible
infidelity.

The Taliban in Afghanistan made it virtually impossible for women to get
medical care because that would require them to be seen by men who were not
their husbands.

Women who were raped by the Pakistani army in Bangladesh during that
country's war for independence were often abandoned by their husbands,
despite an intense government campaign on their behalf. At that, they
weren't badly off. In many other thar-dominated societies, it is
common for rape victims to be killed by their own families.

The practice of female genital mutilation so widely practiced in Africa
and the Middle East is specifically designed to deprive women of sensation
because it is felt that women who can experience sexual sensations are more
likely to be unfaithful.

French filmmaker Pierre Rehov, interviewed about his film Suicide Killers
on MSNBC's "Connected" (July 15, 2006), had this to say:

I came to the conclusion that we are facing a neurosis at the level of an
entire civilization. Most neuroses have in common a dramatic event,
generally linked to an unacceptable sexual behavior. In this case, we are
talking of kids living all their lives in pure frustration, with no
opportunity to experience sex, love, tenderness or even understanding from
the opposite sex. The separation between men and women in Islam is absolute.
So is contempt toward women, who are totally dominated by men. This leads to
a situation of pure anxiety, in which normal behavior is not possible. It is
no coincidence that suicide killers are mostly young men dominated
subconsciously by an overwhelming libido that they not only cannot satisfy
but are afraid of, as if it is the work of the devil. Since Islam describes
heaven as a place where everything on Earth will finally be allowed, and
promises 72 virgins to those frustrated kids, killing others and killing
themselves to reach this redemption becomes their only solution.

Thar and Overpopulation

Although the Vatican is commonly cited as a villain in discussions of overpopulation, a cursory glance at demographic statistics reveals instantly that the fastest-growing countries are not Catholic. Attacking the Vatican is a bit like dropping your keys in a dark alley and looking under the corner lamppost because the light is better there - it's an easy and obvious target. Also, it's a safe target; nobody will criticize you for being a racist or ethnocentrist if you attack a Western institution. Finally the Vatican is fun to attack because they just won't stop raining on the sexual liberation parade.

But the reality is that much of the world's overpopulation is driven by the thar
mentality. In thar societies manhood is measured more or less directly by the ability to father children. I confess I have always found this attitude a bit puzzling - gerbils can mate at the age of 90 days, so procreation isn't exactly a high-order skill. And the attitude is not just limited to men. When women in some African societies were asked if they would limit the sizes of their families, they said first of all they would not go against their husbands' wishes, and second they would not want to face the ridicule of other women. This attitude is not limited to foreign societies. I know of a young black woman with two children who was asked by her family "you're 26 and only have two children? What's wrong with you?"

Another Perspective

Ralph Peters, in "Spotting the Losers: Seven Signs
of Non-Competitive States"
(Parameters,
Spring 1998, pp. 36-47), identified the following indicators of societal
failure. Each is accompanied by a brief quote from his essay.

Restrictions on the free flow of information.

Whether on our own soil or abroad, those segments of humanity that fear
and reject knowledge of the world (and, often, of themselves) are condemned
to failure, poverty, and bitterness.

The subjugation of women.

Authority over their women is the only power many males will ever enjoy.
From Greece to the Ganges, half the world is afraid of girls and gratified
by their subjugation. It is a prescription for cultural mediocrity, economic
failure--and inexpressible boredom.

Inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective
failure.

The cult of victimhood, a plague on the least-successful elements in our
own society, retards the development of entire continents. When individuals
or cultures cannot accept responsibility for their own failures, they will
repeat the behaviors that led to failure. Accepting responsibility for
failure is difficult, and correspondingly rare. The cultures of North
America, Northern Europe, Japan, and Korea (each in its own way) share an
unusual talent for looking in the mirror and keeping their eyes open.

The extended family or clan as the basic unit of social organization.

Where blood ties rule, you cannot trust the contract, let alone the
handshake.

Domination by a restrictive religion.

The price of competitiveness is the courage to be uncertain--not an
absence of belief, but a synthetic capability that can at once accommodate
belief and its contradictions.

A low valuation of education.

Any society that starves education is a loser. Cultures that do not see
inherent value in education are losers. This is even true for some of our
own sub-cultures--groups for whom education has little appeal as means or
end....

Low prestige assigned to work.

States and cultures "win" just by getting up earlier and putting in
eight honest hours and a little overtime.

All of Peters' indicators are clearly evident in what I have termed the
thar mentality. His points 2-4 encompass the core of the thar
mindset, with point 3 probably being the most fundamental. Restrictions on information, clan organization, and restrictive
religion are bulwarks to reinforce the system and ward off challenges, and
disdain for education and work stem from the definition of status in thar
cultures.

The Blindingly Obvious, Part II

Many sociologists point out, accurately, that the features of thar
societies stem from long oppression and social stratification. No doubt. But
thar is one of innumerable cases where the "natural" response to a problem
is the one that will make the problem worse in the fastest possible way. The
natural response to being caught in a rip current is to swim toward shore; the
response that might save your life is to swim parallel to the shore. The natural
response to feeling tired is to rest, but carried to its ultimate conclusion,
that response will make you a couch potato. The natural response to a skid is to
slam on the brakes; we have anti-lock braking systems to counteract that
response. The natural response to trauma is to avoid what caused it; the healthy
response is to deal with it and get on with life. The natural response when your
clothes catch fire is to run; the way to avoid a long stay in a burn ward is to
drop on the ground and roll the fire out. The natural response to prolonged
thirst and starvation is to eat and drink, but that response will kill you.

And thar may be a natural response to poverty and oppression. In
oppressive systems, the natural response is to reserve trust only for those
closest to you, guard what little power you have jealously, and blame the
System. Unfortunately, that's the response most guaranteed to keep the society
poor and oppressed.

Alleviating poverty can certainly help erode the thar mentality, but
it has to be an achieved amelioration. Spain's remarkable growth since the death
of dictator Franco is a stunning example. Wealth not achieved by effort, whether
Saudi Arabia's oil trillions, medieval Spain's plundered gold and silver from
the Americas, or modern paternalistic aid programs, serves only to foster a
feeling of entitlement. Achieved prosperity fosters a sense of responsibility
for one's fate, whereas prosperity granted externally severs the link.

Our Prognosis

The fact that northern European culture has been relatively free of the thar
mentality has been, in my view, one of the most significant factors in explaining its rise to dominance.
Thar is the absolute antithesis of meritocracy; in a thar society
you have status automatically by virtue of being a male, being an elder, or
being a member of an illustrious family. I believe the Western concept of the
individual has been one of the pivotal ingredients in the rise of technology,
because people who see themselves as autonomous agents, capable of changing the
world, invent things. Many historians trace our concept of the individual to the
medieval concept of chivalry, which created an elite class that was
expected to model its conduct on an internalized code of ethics - and sometimes
even did. It is of towering significance that one other society had a similar
knightly class - Japan. In thar cultures people are encouraged to see
themselves as members of a group rather than as individuals, and discouraged
from changing the world because it threatens to undermine tradition.

In many societies dominated by the thar mentality, upward mobility is severely limited. Sooner or later our growth will flatten out.
Will we see a rise in the thar mentality in Western society simply
because dominance of others will be the only outlet for competition?

I see this as a real danger even if - especially if - we eventually succeed
in meeting everyone's needs. In a society where everyone is continually
satisfied, the growth of an egocentric world-view is all but guaranteed. Just
look at how easily things that were wild utopian fantasies or fabulous luxuries
a few decades ago have become "rights" in contemporary American
society. In a society where instant gratification is the norm, any obstruction
of the will, however trivial, will be seen as a direct personal assault. The
more routine gratification becomes, the less able to cope with interruptions
people will become. I think we see a harbinger of this in the rise in road rage.

One troubling indicator is the widespread resentment over the rise of intellectual tasks
and the increasing economic value attached to intellectual skills. This has a
fairly direct parallel to the resentment Asian merchants encountered in many
countries when it was discovered that commerce offered better opportunities for
success than traditional skills.

Another troubling trend is the increasing politicization of the Civil War.
The United States recovered from the Civil War in an absolutely astonishing
fashion. But often, symbols from the past take on new meanings and become
symbols for grievances. In Bosnia I saw icons displayed by people who from all
other appearances had not a shred of religious sentiment, because they had
become nationalistic symbols. Thus the Confederate flag has become a focus for
attack by black militants and a rallying point for white supremacists. Even more
disturbing is a rise in a mean-spirited resistance to any kind of honors for
Confederate soldiers. When sailors from the recently-raised Confederate
submarine the C.S.S. Hunley were buried with honors, there were a number
of complaints that the ceremony amounted to a support for slavery and an insult
to blacks. We could see easily see once dormant historical symbols become the
focal points for future conflicts.

Peters' symptoms of societal weakness carry some warnings for our own future.
The rise of restrictive religion in America is sobering, even more so the
attempts to control the flow of electronic information for corporate and
government ends. But it's the erosion of personal responsibility that sounds the
loudest warning. Erosion of a sense of personal responsibility weakens the work
ethic and the value placed on education, fosters resentment of those who do
advance through personal effort, and creates pressures to stifle achievement and
penalize those who achieve.through personal effort. It gives rise to denial
games in which achievement is dismissed as luck or worse yet as theft from those
less fortunate. At the same time, it emphasizes rewards based on luck
(lotteries, reality television), which reinforce the belief that success is not
linked to effort.

America's prosperity may be self-limiting. No American can say he or she
earned all the technological blessings around us. People who put out an
honest day's work can at least say they contribute their part, but the whole is
vastly more than the sum of its parts. A few thousand computer scientists have
completely transformed American society, and indeed the whole world. We see
people who don't want to pay taxes for education demanding the most advanced
health care for themselves. If the reward system for contributing to technology
erodes sufficiently and the sense of entitlement becomes arrogant enough,
America's ascent may stall.

Finally, given how the concept of "absolute scarcity" recurs in the
sociological literature on thar cultures, if we ever return to a
situation of "absolute scarcity" where life is a zero sum game and one person
can succeed only if someone else fails, we could well see a return to thar.
People who think the collapse of technological society would be a good thing
because it would bring us closer to the earth and create closer-knit societies
are in for a rude shock.

Thar drives much of the world's terrorism, and in the short term the fight against terrorism is frustrating. But in the long term Western society is doing precisely what terrifies
thar cultures the most. We are generating forces that foster individual autonomy and especially demands by women for more equality. These forces attack the very root of
thar: the whole fabric of status, hierarchy and authority that creates the reward system in
thar cultures.